Minorities and Film

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Minorities and Film

Minorities and the Film Industry

It’s September, the kids are back in school, and it’s time for another new season of television. Another round of must see Felicity, Friends, and Frasier, with a side of ER and some Nash Bridges for dessert. Loads and loads of Caucasian males and females making us laugh, and cry. What you do not see are Black, Hispanic, or other minorities making us laugh, and cry. In this day and age, where everyone gets a fair shot at doing what they really love, the same can not be said for minorities in the film industry. More and more minorities are being turn away in favor of Caucasian actors. It’s not only actors that are feeling the pinch, its also writers, directors, producers, and network execs.

This past fall season, of the 26 new fall programs, none had a minority cast in the lead. A recent report by a San Francisco advocacy group found 80 percent of all primetime characters are white, 13 percent are black, and 3 percent are from all other minority groups.(The Christian Science Monitor). I don’t know about you but these numbers do not sit right with me. Attempts by the NAACP to fight this problem have been successful. In an agreement, which began January 6, the NAACP agreed with networks such as ABC and NBC, to hire minorities, to purchase more from minority businesses, to cast minorities in leads and other roles, and to ensure that diversity is brought about at other levels. However helpful this may be, minorities hope that such moves do not lead to token roles, with minorities chosen for their skin color, not their talent. “The second you start legislating a fix with quota systems, you open the door to people grabbing someone of the right race as a seat filler.” (Christian Science Monitor.) Says Samantha Corbin, a writer on The Practice. You might ask yourself “Why can’t we go back to the good old 70’s, when everyone loved Sanford and Son and The Jeffersons. Or the 80’s, when Bill Cosby ruled supreme and little Arnold made us cry laughing on Different Strokes.”. You might also be wondering when a minority would be moving in next door to the cast of Friends. The answers could lie in the industry’s most popular excuses.

The first excuse is economics. The business of TV is ruled by a simple declaration: Get the audience the advertisers want. The consequence is that major networks forgo the mass ...

... middle of paper ...

...s the only one. Except for Time-Warner’s Richard Parsons and Barry Meyer, there are no minorities at the top of the film industry. And there are practically none at the next tier either.

Minorities have come a long way in the last hundred years. From the slaves being freed after the Civil War, to the preaching of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and all other great minority leaders and people who have paved the way for us. All of their work has paid of cause look where we are now. Now it is time to take over the entertainment industry at all facets. Just like the great leaders paved the way for freedom and equality, we will do the same. We will pave a new road in the entertainment industry, for all of the up and comers, so that there dreams an come true.

Bibliography:

Poniewozik, James. “The Vast Wasteland” Time 26 July, 1999: 70-73

Flint, Joseph. “WhiteWash” Entertainment Weekly 30 July. 1999: 31-35

Takahashi, Corey. “Color Blind” Entertainment Weekly 8 Oct. 1999: 6-12

Wood, Daniel. “USA” The Christian Science Monitor 19 Jan. 2000: 3-6

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